to
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Mr. Harper,” the girl defended herself, correctly
interpreting Miriam’s squint.
“You may go now,” Lady Spenford told her. She
stepped forward. “How do you do, Harper?”
Tom shuffled higher up his pillows. He looked as if
he would dearly love to get out of bed and bow. “Well,
thank you, my lady. And thank you for asking Mr.
Young to visit. I believe my recovery was much quicker
thanks to him.”
Not a word to Miriam. Which, strictly speaking, was
proper in the presence of the countess, but it still miffed
her mightily.
“You’ll see I’ve brought Miss Bligh,” Lady Spenford
said. “What’s that you have pinned to your wall over
there, Harper? May I look?”
“Yes, my lady. It’s a sampler. My sister stitched it for
me. Psalm 23…”
Miriam snickered at Tom’s bemusement as the
countess, a parson’s daughter who likely knew the
twenty-third Psalm backward as well as forward,
crossed the room and focused intently on reading the
unframed sampler he’d pinned up.
She wondered what Tom would say if he knew Lady
Spenford considered herself to be acting as chaperone.
For Miriam. With Tom.
He’d probably be horrified. She sighed.
“What is it, Miriam?” he asked in a low voice.
Better not give him a relapse. “Nothing,” she said.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Tired.” He pressed back into the pillows. “Feel like
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THE EARL’S MISTAKEN BRIDE
I’ve done ten rounds in the boxing ring in an unfair
fight. But I’m getting better.” He watched her face.
“Were you worried about me?”
“I had a sister die of influenza,” she muttered.
“I remember,” he said. “Little Katherine.”
She nodded, surprised. “I know how quickly it can
turn lethal.”
“Mine wasn’t that severe,” he assured her.
“I—I’ve been wanting to tell you I appreciate your
apology. You know, for saying I was no good at my
job.”
He paused. “You must truly have been worried about
me.”
Miriam glanced at the countess, and decided to
pretend her mistress’s feigned deafness was real. “I
didn’t want you to go to your grave with me angry at
you, so I forgave everything you’ve ever said or done to
hurt me.”
Too late, she realized she’d as good as told him how
much she cared about him…for if she didn’t care, how
could he hurt her?
In for a penny, in for a pound, as her mother would
say. “If we both put the past behind us,” she said, still
unsure where his resentment of her lay, “maybe we
could start afresh.”
Even through the lingering pallor of his illness, Tom
looked stricken, flattened against his pillow as if he’d
just done an eleventh round in that boxing ring.
Not at all as if he felt the same way about her.
Miriam choked on a sob of humiliation—she sounded
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like a mouse caught in a trap. She ran from the room,
startling the countess out of her contemplation of the
comfort provided by the Lord through the Valley of the
Shadow of Death.
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THE EARL’S MISTAKEN BRIDE
Chapter Fifteen
For Tuesday morning, Lucinda organized an excursion
to Richmond Park. A small group—ten or twelve
people—would stroll the park then enjoy a picnic. With
the dowager doing so much better, Constance was eager
to have a day outdoors; she accepted the invitation
without consulting Marcus.
To her surprise, her husband came, too. Presumably
for the pleasure of his cousin’s company, rather than his
wife’s.
Apart from Lucinda and Jonathan, Constance didn’t
know the other members of the party well. She’d met
them at various ton events, but considered them mere
acquaintances. Yesterday’s rain had left the sky a clear,
clean blue, and the temperature not too hot—perfect
conditions. They began their stroll on the broad sweep
of the Queen’s Ride. Narrower paths branched off
either side into the Duchess Wood. There was no wind;
deer grazed peacefully on lush grass beneath ancient
oaks.
“Beautiful,”
declared
Major
Price-Chorley,
a
bachelor gentleman who’d attended Eton with Jonathan.
“‘Mongst boughs pavilion’d where the deer’s swift
leap,’” he quoted, “‘startles the wild bee from the
foxglove bell.’”
“Mr. Keats’s poem is an ode to solitude,” Constance
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pointed out. “I fear you’ll be horribly crowded by us
today.”
“You know the poem?” Major Price-Chorley moved
around Lucinda so that he was walking alongside
Constance.
“I read it a few days ago in the Examiner, ” she said.
“I believe it’s Mr. Keats’s first published work?”
Marcus watched his wife become engrossed in
conversation with the major with a sense of mild shock.
He’d never heard of this Keats fellow—not surprising if
he’d only managed to write one poem, he supposed—
and since when did Constance read a liberal magazine
like the Examiner? Marcus didn’t allow the thing in his
house— Ah. The Reverend Somerton, no doubt, had
been sending such “literature” to his daughter.
Marcus answered a question from Lucinda about his
plans for a summer house party at Chalmers—he had
none. They moved on to other people’s house parties
and which would be worth attending…a light enough
topic that Marcus could keep one ear trained on
Constance’s